For a New Global Climate Deal, All Eyes Are on COP26: QuickTake

(Bloomberg) -- The United Nations has convened world leaders many times before to discuss climate change, dating to the 1990s. The next meeting, scheduled for November in Glasgow, may be the most important ever. U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, says COP26 will be the last chance for the world to avoid climate disaster.

1. What is COP26?

COP stands for Conference of the Parties, and this year’s is the 26th. Officials from 197 countries gather in one location for a fortnight of negotiations aimed at solving the climate crisis. World leaders set the tone, then negotiators thrash out the details of a communique. COP26 was due to be held in 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic. The U.K., which holds the rotating presidency along with Italy, took the lead in organizing the conference.

2. What happens at COP meetings?

They’re a platform for achieving consensus on cutting emissions and adapting to the extreme weather events caused by rising temperatures and sea levels. A sticking point of negotiations over the years has been allowing for poor countries to develop their economies while recognizing that rich nations have grown wealthy because they were able to pollute. In 2009, the COP process suffered a major setback after leaders failed to agree on a global deal in Copenhagen. Six years later, talks were back on track, leading to the Paris Agreement -- the international effort to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels, with a “stretch target” of 1.5°C. BloombergNEF calls COP26 “the first concrete test” of the Paris accord.

3. Why is this year special?

It’s time for signatory countries to update their initial pledges to help achieve the Paris goals. These promises are called NDCs -- Nationally Determined Contributions -- and most date back to 2016, when the Paris Agreement took effect. It was clear that initial commitments wouldn’t be enough, so countries agreed to come back in 2020 with “enhanced” NDCs. But many countries haven’t yet submitted their new plans, including China and India, some of the world’s biggest emitters. They have promised to do so before the meeting. Part of the problem is that rich countries haven’t delivered on their decade-old pledge to mobilize $100 billion a year to help poor countries deal with the hazards of climate change, such as storms, floods and rising sea levels. Countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia say they can’t raise their emissions ambition without more cash from developed countries.

4. Who is lagging on their commitments?

While many European countries have increased their climate aid, the U.S. hasn’t kept pace. At the UN on Sept. 21, Biden doubled the latest U.S. pledge to $11.4 billion annually beginning in 2024, but that still has to be approved by Congress, and activists argue it doesn’t come close to the U.S.’s fair share for the fund. ODI, a think tank based in London, puts that figure closer to $43 billion, based on the U.S.’s wealth, emissions and population size. The U.S. fell behind partly because former President Donald Trump temporarily pulled the U.S. out of the Paris accord.

5. What else is on the agenda?

Some key decisions need to be made on remaining details of the Paris deal related to financing, transparency, loss and damage, and help for poorer nations to build technical expertise to tackle climate change. At COP25, held in Madrid in 2019, countries tried but failed to create a global carbon-market mechanism that could allow them to generate credits from projects that reduce pollution. The idea is to allow the trade of credits, which in theory pushes funding toward places where the biggest gains can be made most cheaply. Countries will be looking to find a compromise this time to get a deal done. Incoming COP26 President Alok Sharma wants to “consign coal to history,” which would be a key step toward limiting warming to 1.5C. 

6. Is that a realistic goal?

It’s proving difficult. An all-night meeting of Group of 20 ministers in Naples, Italy, in July failed to produce an agreement on phasing out coal power, the most polluting source of energy. India -- which depends heavily on coal and is the world’s third-largest emitter -- was a key holdout at the Naples meeting. China, the world’s biggest polluter, says it will stop supporting overseas coal power projects, but President Xi Jinping didn’t set a date for that or mention the gigawatts of new capacity planned at home.

7. Might the pandemic interfere with this year’s meeting?

The U.K. government has said it’s working hard to make sure the meeting is held in person, and it’s even offering vaccinations to anyone who is accredited. But it still all depends on the scale of the pandemic. “The power of having people in a room together is unassailable when you’re trying to negotiate from lots of different positions,” said Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the U.K. minister in charge of climate adaptation issues at COP26. During the negotiations, countries may also raise concern about vaccine equity.

8. Who’s going?

While the final delegate list has still to be decided, it’s likely to include a raft of world leaders including Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Activist Greta Thunberg has said she might boycott the session to protest vaccine nationalism.

The Reference Shelf

• QuickTake explainers on Biden’s new U.S. climate pledge and the challenge of becoming climate neutral.
• There’s reason to think the conference will fall short of decisive action.
• The home page of COP26.
• What’s known about extreme weather and climate change.
• Biden’s $5.7 billion pledge to help poor countries disappointed activists.
• Bloomberg Opinion columnist Therese Raphael looked at what’s at stake for the U.K. as host.

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